The forum resumed its tenth special emergency session this Thursday, after more than 20 days of blockade in Gaza and a growing increase in violence and civilian casualties.
Despite the complexity of the context, the Security Council failed to achieve consensus among its 15 members to issue a joint resolution.
As an alternative, over a dozen UN member countries requested an emergency meeting of the General Assembly when Jordan presented a resolution on behalf of the group of Arab States, calling for an immediate ceasefire and for Israel to annul the order of evacuation from northern Gaza. It also demands the supply of essential goods to the Strip and stresses “the importance of avoiding further destabilization and escalation of violence in the region.”
The 193 member states of the UN will be able to vote on the proposal, which would have important political weight, although it will not be legally binding.
General Assembly President Dennis Francis spoke during the opening session on Thursday, calling for an end to the violence and a ceasefire in the conflict. “The solution is to avoid bloodshed, releasing hostages and opening humanitarian corridors to bring supplies to the enclave,” said the representative, who reminded the importance of the creation of two states to end the hostilities. “Once again, we meet the most serious increase of violence and hostility in the Middle East in decades.”
The permanent ambassador of Palestine to the UN, Riyad Mansour, questioned the lack of clarity in requesting a ceasefire in Gaza, when a thousand Palestinians die every day and 70 percent of the victims are women and children. The denunciation of the death of a thousand Israelis does not show the same indignation as the daily slaughter of a thousand Palestinians, he denounced. “We are meeting while Palestinians in Gaza are under the bombs, while families are being killed, while hospitals are paralyzed, while neighborhoods are destroyed, while people are fleeing from one place to another with no safe place to go,” he stressed.
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